


Step Forwards

by PanBoleyn



Series: Know What You're Fighting For [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:16:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her cousins’ small bodies were placed before the throne in this room. But this Rhaenys Targaryen walks up the long path to kneel before a man whose brother nodded approvingly to those corpses. But she is not here to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step Forwards

**Author's Note:**

> Runs with the idea that Dany’s Rhaego was a twin, but since he was killed by magic and no one knew there were two babies, his sister was safe. Takes place roughly 15 years after the first fic in this series, 'I Will Not Fall, I Will Not Break'.

_“This is me. This is my moment. This is my battle cry. I step forwards.” - Catalina of Aragon_ , **_The Constant Princess_**

It was the deal made, when Rhaenys was just a baby, that kept her mother from taking back the Seven Kingdoms with her dragons. Daenerys Targaryen was the rightful heir to the throne, but first and foremost she was a mother. To her people, and to her daughter. Daenerys had decided she had enough to do with the cities she had conquered in Slaver’s Bay, that her first responsibility was to them. And besides - was she not more of a Targaryen for taking what was hers, what she had earned by conquest?

Or that was what her mother had always told her. She had also said that Rhaenys would have the advantage, that Prince Emrys was nearly four years her junior, a boy who could be ruled by a strong wife. A boy whose children could be raised Targaryen, even if they are called Baratheon. Rhaenys has been trying to remember that for the whole voyage, especially when her ship comes into port in King’s Landing.

A princess in Dothraki leathers is a princess the commons don’t know what to think of. The nobles who come to meet her hide their smirks, but she sees. She has always seen, far too much in fact. It is a relief to be alone in her chambers save for one handmaid.

Irri once belonged to her mother; now she is the first of Rhaenys’ handmaidens, a foster mother for the young princess all her life and the only mother left to her now.

She looks at her reflection in the mirror as Irri brushes out her long, dark hair. The leathers have been exchanged for a red silk dress in the style of Pentos, because she has no Westerosi clothes. Red silk, black hair… Fire and blood. “Are you afraid?” Irri asks softly, in Dothraki. “It is all right, if you are. You are far from the khalasar.”

But Rhaenys shakes her head. “I cannot be afraid. I must never be afraid.”

And this is what she tells herself, standing at the far end of the throne room. For an occasion like this, there are smaller thrones to the sides of the Iron Throne. Queen Margaery and the Princess Rhian - who looks very like her mother aside from her Baratheon hair and eyes - sit to King Renly’s left, while his son Prince Emrys is on his right. Emrys seems unsure when she looks at him, as though afraid to meet her eyes. He is only fourteen, and Rhaenys feels her seventeen years like a sudden weight. Perhaps her mother is right.

Queen and princess look at her with curious, assessing gazes, one amber brown and the other deep blue. She can feel the eyes of all the court on her, and she looks at the king last. They have heard, even in Meereen and Astapor, in Yunkai and the Dothraki Sea, that Renly looks very like his brother Robert, the Usurper who destroyed her family. Robert had the bodies of Aegon Targaryen and the last Rhaenys laid at his feet, and now his brother will have this Rhaenys kneeling before him.

But she won’t die. She will rise up, and become the shy Prince’s wife. A Targaryen in a Baratheon cloak. Unless… Unless somehow this is all a vile trick, but even if it is, it’s too late to turn back.

The gazes of king, queen, and court are just eyes. They are not weapons to hurt or kill her, and she does not fear them. She is the daughter of the great Khal Drogo, who died undefeated in battle, and Daenerys Stormborn, the Mother of Dragons. She is not afraid, with their blood in her veins. She will never allow herself to be afraid, or at least, not to show it.

Fire and blood. She is a Targaryen, she has every right to be here, and here she will remain. She is the Dragon Princess, and she will not allow herself to fear or to falter.

She steps into the throne room to meet her future.


End file.
